Baxter, Arthur win county cross country titles

Rio Mesa's Arthur wins boys race

From left: Ryan Klachko, Royal High School, Christian Giammich, Ventura High School, and Michael Spencer, Thousand Oaks High School, battle to the finish in the boys varsity race of the Ventura County Cross Country Championships at Lake Casitas. Klachko finished 32nd, Giammich 34th, and Spencer finished 33rd.

Special to The Star

Sarah Baxter makes it look so easy.

The Simi Valley High sophomore effortlessly glides along the course without a hint of torment.

Apparently looks can be deceiving, at least according to Baxter.

For the second consecutive year, Baxter ran away from the competition to capture the varsity girls individual title at the Ventura County Cross Country Championships on Friday afternoon at Lake Casitas in Ojai.

Baxter traversed the dusty course in a time of 17 minutes, 41 seconds. Royal freshman Brianne Holland was second (18:07) and Ventura senior Hannah Kirkegaard was third (18:08) in a school-record course time.

Despite sitting out the early part of the season with a foot injury, Baxter's time was a one-second improvement from last year.

She now holds the fifth and sixth best times in course history.

But Baxter's triumph didn't come without some pain. Not bad pain from further injury, but the pain of pushing her body to the limit.

"It hurt," Baxter said. "This is just a really tough course overall. I don't what it is, but it's always a hard race for me."

Rio Mesa senior Geno Arthur won a closely contested boys varsity race in a time of 15:25. Arthur managed to pull away late from Nordhoff senior Gustavo Sanchez (15:35.35) and St. Bonaventure senior Anthony Allen (15:35.50).

"It was just an honor to even race with these guys," Arthur said. "They did the hard work until I made a good pass on the third mile. But they did the hard work for me. They were leading the whole race. I just have so much respect for the guys behind me and I am just proud to be in the winner of this great county."

Baxter, the defending state champion, set the pace for a dominating team performance from Simi Valley.

The win came on the heels of its Division I-II team sweepstakes title at the Mount SAC Invitational last weekend.

"Coming off that big of a high, I was surprised we weren't flat today," Simi Valley head coach Roger Evans said. "We are still in heavy training and had a good solid week to try and perform well. I am just really pleased. I thought we would fall back more than we did."

Evans has run out of adjectives to describe Baxter's weekly wonders.

She has only been running for about three weeks since her recovery from inflammation on the growth plate in her left heel.

"Sarah is amazing," Evans said. "She comes to win. She is still kind of working her way back into conditioning and she has a ways to go, even as well as she is running. It just shows you the amazing talent that she has."

Holland — this year's freshman sensation — finished second in her county championship debut in a time that would have ranked on the top 10 list before Baxter bumped everyone down a notch.

"I thought I did really, really good," Holland said. "It was tough competition, especially since it's people who we are going against at league finals. I wanted to get second, and hopefully I can stay in that position."

While Holland has three more attempts for a title, Arthur was down to his last one. It only made winning that much sweeter.

"I knew if I had a good race I would definitely be in contention," Arthur said. "It just came down to the end and how badly I wanted it."